PI
by HDSweet Saren
Summary: Garrus and Rage Shepard have been married for one year. But trouble is brewing when Garrus suspects that his bond mate is being unfaithful.
1. Chapter 1

**Note**: Just a little something I that had been brewing in the back of my mind. Second chapter to come soon. Still tinkering with my other stories. I wrote this early in the morning, hope you enjoy.

* * *

_And yet again, she had done it for the second night in a row, the beautiful Rage Shepherd had gotten up and left me in the middle of the night. She thought she was being clever, thought she was being quiet, but I saw her out of the corner of my eye: pretending to be asleep. Dressed in dark clothing, she slipped on some boots, tossing me a careless glance in the darkness before gliding out into the hallway of our five bedroom estate. I could hear her footsteps, counting each one as they pressed further and further down the hall. _

_ I could only roll over on my back, fully awake, staring at the blank ceiling as if I were back on the Normandy, looking out a window into the vastness of space. I sighed heavily, a wave of depression washing over my body. Try as I may, I couldn't blink all the tears away. So I try another position— anything, no matter how subtle, to make the pain stop. Ending up on my side, every movement stinging, biting as if I were lying on glass; the tears just flowed. _

_ We'd been married a whole damn year, but this "leaving me in the middle of the night" thing didn't start happening until about four months in. She'd come back early in the morning, beat, sometimes dirty. When I'd ask her where she'd been, she'd give me some gruff response about an abandoned house, or out in a distant field somewhere. The woman couldn't even look me in the eye when I asked. That's how I knew, she was cheating on me_.

"How long are you gonna let this fly, Garrus? Until she's pregnant with another man's baby?"

"Hey." Garrus said firmly, pointing an accusatory claw at his best turian friend Nihlus Kryik.

"Nihlus is right. It's been eight months, that's more than enough time for her to come clean." Ashley Williams added, slipping down into her seat.

Garrus sipped at his volus inspired margarita.

"You're a good guy, Garrus. You deserve better." B'runas Mmkayas, the batarian security guard proclaimed. He was already sitting at the bar, in his usual spot, downing his usual drink: a Black Diamond Ultra, a newly created human rum that was sweeping the galaxy.

Garrus's focus dipped to the table for a moment. "I know." He didn't sound convinced, having a very noticeable scar on his face.

* * *

No woman had ever given him the time of day, that was until Rage Shepard came along. They had worked in the same building for years, but the first time he'd seen her was the annual Christmas party. She had been chatting with her group of friends, periodically darting back and forth from the bar to her gossip circle. Not once did she look in his direction, but Garrus figured that when she was drunk enough, that's when he would make his move. An intoxicated woman was the only kind of woman that Garrus would even dare approach.

Before Rage, Garrus had never been on a date. He'd never even kissed a girl. His life consisted of work, work, and more work—living in a small, one bedroom apartment. His good friend Nihlus had tried to get him to be more social but having such noticeable scars on his face made it difficult for him to come out of his shell.

It wasn't until at the Christmas party, at around 10 pm, Garrus decided to make his move. But to his surprise, Rage was coming his way. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest as she approached, striding up to him with this mean cat-walk that had all the boys looking.

"Hi." She extended her hand, with this inviting smile taking over her face.

Garrus had to remember how his tongue worked before he could respond. "Hi." Taking her hand; her mocha skin was a smooth as butter, green eyes padding down his alien form slowly.

"Rage Shepard." Her eyes continued their venture, glancing him up and down more than once. "I know just about everyone here, but I don't know you." She bit a small piece of her lip, holding the supple flesh between her pearly white teeth while Garrus found his voice.

"Garrus Vakarian." He shook her hand longer than he'd shaken anyone else's hand, longer than what was deemed normal.

Rage noticed, glancing down at her hand, now being held hostage. The smile on her face had grown wider. She was glowing in a since, brighter than before.

When Garrus finally took the hint, he cleared his throat nervously, releasing her hand in the same instant. Embarrassment worked itself along his mandibles, especially the scarred one, and his sub-vocals. He silently thanked the spirits that she couldn't hear that additional frequency.

"Enjoying the Christmas party?"

"What?" Garrus exclaimed in a louder voice.

Rage leaned in closer to his face. "Are you enjoying the Christmas party?"

He got a whiff of her fruity perfume, the scent doing things to the package between his legs.

Clearing his throat again, Garrus answered, "Oh yes. I am."

She giggled, easily seeing through his lie. This Christmas party sucked, like all the rest of them. Only the alcohol made it bearable.

"You must be drunk." Rage added. She giggled even harder.

"I am… a little bit."

Rage's hand found itself on his shoulder for support, as she laughed. "Well I'm not." She finally spoke, looking Garrus in his blue eyes which sat like Earth's moon: seemingly fading slowly within the void of space. "Designated driver."

Garrus was taken aback. Here she was, a beautiful woman who could get any guy she wanted, yet she preferred to talk to the turian with a huge scar on his face. _Maybe it was a dare_. From all the rejections Garrus had gotten over the years, he knew better than to get his hopes up.

"So what department do you work in?" Rage finally removed her hand from his shoulder, and oddly enough, Garrus felt as if a part of him had been removed. She was looking in his eyes, a huge smile still upon her face.

_Now, either she's trying hard not to laugh at my scars, or she lied and really is drunk. Let's pray for the ladder. _"Programming."

"Mmm, sales." Rage admitted with much less enthusiasm. The corners of her full lips dropped when she said it.

"I bet." His words must have hit a nerve, a frown growing on her narrow face. "I mean, you've got the voice for it." She still didn't seem convinced. "I mean… it's sexy." He didn't mean to say that. The words just fell out.

"Really." A smile began to rise as she stared into his eyes.

There was a brief pause that fellow sale executive, Jacob Taylor shattered when he yelled, "I hate Frosty the Snow Man. No I really do. I _really_ do. I just want everyone to know that. He's got a carrot nose for fuck sake. A carrot, people. A _car-rot_!"

Rage and Garrus glanced over at Mr. Taylor who had drunk more than a fish, staggering toward the bar again.

"I gotta go, Garrus Vakarian." Disappointment was evident in her voice, real disappointment. "May I call you some time?"

_Come again_? Garrus nodded his head yes before finding the words to speak it. "Sure." This was a first. Not only did she speak to him on seemingly her own accord, but she wanted to see him again. _What's the catch_?

* * *

"It must be something I did." Garrus sighed.

Nihlus's mandibles fell to disbelief. "Something _you_ did!?"

"I must've upset her somehow…" he continued to stumble over his words when Ashley interjected.

"No! If she's cheating on you, it's not any of your fault. It's her. It's all her!" Ashley's eyebrows sat closer to her eyes, face scrunched into a frown.

Garrus shrugged his shoulders, glancing down at the table.

Ashley placed her palm on his shoulder drawing him away from his thoughts. "Hey," she sang. "It's just like a wound. The longer you let it fester, the worst it will get."

Garrus inhaled deeply before training his eyes on the human. "Okay. I'll confront her… tonight."


	2. Chapter 2

SSSSSS! The door to the bedroom sliding open very prudently; yellow light blemishing the slowly expanding entrance to Garrus and Rage's bedroom. Size eight and a half shoes crept into the room, walking on tiptoes.

CREEEK!

Rage clapped her hand against her mouth, eyelids widened as she stared hard at the queen-sized bed. She could vaguely make out a lump in the bed, elongated enough to be the shape of her hubby. Relieved that he had not stirred, she moved deeper into the room, making a sharp right, which took her to the walk-in closet. She let out a tired sigh as a backpack fit for a hiker, took a trip off of her shoulders. The weight and her sheer exhaustion caused the bag to fall to the wooden floor, making a loud plop. She gasped again, fearing the worst: _If he wakes up, he's going to start interrogating me and I'll be force to tell him_. She wasn't ready to tell him just yet. What she had going on was too big to just spit out. It was years of careful consideration, long before they were married.

She slipped into the bathroom moments later taking a quick shower. From there she made her way to the bed. Once she crawled in, her arms immediately snaked across Garrus's side when he suddenly turned on a small light by the bed, rolling over a second later.

"Where were you."

Rage was frozen with shock. She had thought he was out cold. She swallowed hard, trying not to look surprised but it was too late. The gig was up. Her mouth opened but nothing came out as her blank mind raced for some kind of excuse. She couldn't use the late night ice cream fix—she had already used that one.

She could say for a drive, which was partially true but at three o'clock in the morning…?

Garrus sat up even further in the bed, glancing ahead of him, his hand running along his fringe out of frustration.

"I was…" She was sounding so stupid right now, wanting to slap herself later, "driving."

Garrus merely glanced at her, clearly not buying it.

"Around, the neighborhood… because I… couldn't sleep." Rage continued. She was such a bad liar.

There was a silence, a painful silence that loomed over the room, giving Rage that feeling that she was drowning. She felt as if she didn't breathe the entire time.

Garrus reached over, grabbing her hand, finally breaking the suffocation she felt. "If I'm doing something wrong, you can tell me." His icy blue, avian, eyes, slightly masked by darkness met hers.

Her heart fell to the pit of her stomach, now feeling like a piece of shit again. She hated lying to her husband, or not telling him the truth. Rage knew from fellow co-workers that Garrus had never been in a genuine relationship. And from his actions, she figured out that he was not comfortable in his own skin… or scales; due to his scars. But she didn't care about his scars. Rage fell in love with the man behind the scars.

She leaned into him, placing a kiss on his mouth-plates. When Rage pulled away, she said, "You're doing everything right, and I love you so much for it."

Garrus was still looking at her. He had this anxious, yet weary look in his eyes. Her other hand came up to his face, caressing the blemishes on his mandible and some of his mouth.

_Fuck it_. "I didn't just go driving, Garrus."

The turian had a face that said, "I figured as much."

"I met up with some friends…" She waited for his reaction.

It went from scared to teetering on devastation.

"In a graveyard."

Garrus's face suddenly shifted, his mandibles spacing apart. He leaned back a hair, glancing at her with perplexity. Why would anyone be meeting up with others in a graveyard?

_Just fucking say it_. "We were… _I_ was ghost hunting." It felt like a boulder just fell off of her shoulders. Her face was dead serious as she studied her love.

Garrus didn't say anything, prompting her to elaborate.

"We've," she couldn't help but include her team, "been compiling ghost footage for quite some time, and I think, with a few more hits, we can't take this thing to the next level." There was so much confidence backing her words, her eyes no longer on Garrus but looking past him, into the future.

Even if Garrus wanted to comment right then and there, he couldn't. Rage began yapping about EVPs, which Garrus had no clue what an EVP was; causing him to scrunch up his plated face as best he could. Rage on the other hand, was now talking more to herself than to Garrus, still going on about the voice's she had recorded on her omni tool. Then she began yacking about orbs and shadows, but not just any kind of shadows: paranormal shadows. Then there was the countless "feelings" she had felt: goose bumps, uneasiness, hair on the back of her neck standing up… that kind of ilk.

Her admittance soon became a full blown, life confession. She had always been interested in the paranormal, and aspired to be an investigator of such things. Garrus's face couldn't morph any more than it already had. He had heard her mention something about ghost hunting when they were dating. He laughed it off, telling her that that was ridiculous. He wasn't overly religious, and turians believed in spirits, but he saw spirituality more as political propaganda.

Rage on the other hand, was a Christian and she believed fully in the supernatural, and she felt that it was her duty to show the galaxy that ghosts do exist.

When she finally took a breath, Garrus was just… there. Throughout the duration of her spiel, Garrus had been watching for some hint that she was lying, but the conviction in her voice, her eyes never looking away—not even blinking—it became painfully obvious that she was neither lying nor joking. He felt like he taken some hard core drugs and was tripping out by the time she had taken a breath.

"So this weekend, James and I are gonna meet with this psychic—"

"I'm sorry, what?" Garrus finally interrupted. His face was anything but understanding, and she had been around him long enough to know when a turian was being perceptive.

"I know you're not a true believer in the supernatural like I am, but try to have an open mind about this, Garrus." She paused, hoping for those sexy mandibles to separate from the sides of his mouth. But they were just as stubborn as Garrus was perplexed. "There's some serious money to be made in doing this." Money was a very strong motivator for anyone. And if he couldn't be swayed by her enthusiasm, then she had to up the ante. "Do you know how many haunted locations there are just within a twenty mile radius of our house…?"

Garrus's mouth was slightly open, eyes staring into to hers blankly, unblinking.

He had heard this spiel before, bits and pieces really, but he wrote it off as a silly dream that would never, and he means never, take wings. Yet, here he was at three: almost four o'clock in the morning; listening to her ghost fantasies. He should've known better. Rage was always watching anything and everything paranormal from: _Real Real Ghost Stories_, to _Spooky-natural_, to _Oh My God! I Just Saw A Ghost!_ Then there was A _Haunted Haunted Travel_, _Galaxies Most Haunted Places_, _1001 Paranormal Investigations_, _Confessions of Demonic Possessions_, _Things That Go Bump in the Night_, _Visions 'N Apparitions_, _Mysteriously Paranormal_, and _Son of a EVP_. She also had countless books on spirits, and supernatural occurrences. She had looked at the paranormal with both an open, but also a scientific approach, which she had tried to explain countless times before, but Garrus usually lost focus soon after the words: ghost, paranormal, supernatural, and or spirit.

He was still rooted in silence, staring at his love as if she had grown two heads. She was unsure what he was thinking, the silence becoming too loud, she added, "I've researched countless articles regarding hauntings, and I know it can be dangerous, but… but this is my passion, Garrus."

His hand moved from hers, reaching over to cut off the light with the wave of his hand. Once they were bathed in darkness, he neared her mouth with his, kissing her gently on the lips. "Goodnight."

With that, his head was to the pillow, covers pulled up to his fringe, weary eyelids sliding shut.

Rage was left in the dark, still upright, glancing in his direction. "Garrus?" She suddenly called out with a taxed drawl.

Garrus inhaled deeply, responding with, "Good night. I love you."

And that was that. It wasn't the first time he had ended a conversation with her like that, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. When it came to the afterlife Garrus's tolerance for the subject matter usually flat-lined.


End file.
